


running in the direction of the moon

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Gen, M/M, Someone Hug Worf, set after sins of the father, that said you can read it as a squish or just worf being worf, worf has a big crush on riker but he doesn't want to acknowledge this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 16:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14549046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: Liberosis: The desire to care less about things, Or: Worf's 3am emotions and ruminations on company and Terran coffee





	running in the direction of the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookhobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/gifts).



It is dark in his quarters. A very little starlight takes the edge off the darkness, making dim blue shapes of the furniture. Through the doorway into the next room, the red standby light of the replicator glows. The ever-present background noise of the engines is lower tonight than usual. They have nowhere to go, awaiting orders, all but idling in space. The engines are on, of course, for life support, but the ship drifts through the dark on the echoes of impulse power.

Worf sits up, leaning his head half on the edge of the headboard and half on the windowsill. The elastic of his hairnet itches where the knot presses against the thin skin behind his ear and he pulls it off, lets his hair fall against and behind the headboard. Strands fall in his eyes and he lets them.

He could ask the computer for the time but idly he thinks it would be a shame to disturb the quiet so he lifts his PADD off the bedside table and reads the time off the sleeping display. 0300. Time for Delta shift to relieve Gamma. If he had woken some half an hour earlier he would have gone, swapped shifts with Lieutenant Hal-Var and given his six hours to Starfleet in the muted, quiet space of what they called the early morning.

He tries not to think about why he would have switched; he calls it desire to do his duty and leaves it at that. He arches his neck, feels the bones crunch. He could go back to sleep - Alpha shift starts at 0900 - but when he wakes he wakes quickly and so he may as well just get up. He pushes himself out of bed, rolls his shoulders and winces as they crunch, too. As he stands, the  static of the replicated nightdress sticks it to his knees and he grumbles absently. He makes his way across to the replicator, requesting Terran coffee in a low voice. Upon further thought he asks for a painkiller, too, the fast acting kind that make him a little woozy. He has a box of hyposprays for migraines but this isn't that bad, just a low thud in the back of his skull.

He sips at the coffee, winces, asks the replicator for a couple of those sugar packets you still get in Terran cafes. He doesn't like the half-bitter taste of Terran coffee plain; the closest Klingon equivalent is more than twice this strength, sharp and heavy in the throat. Terran coffee feels like a pale imitation and so he always drinks it sweetened, softened, so that it doesn't remind him how weak he is to ask for it in the first place.

He could dress and go eat in Ten-Forward, he thinks, taking his coffee and letting himself be woozy and medicated in company - but he runs risks, that way. He isn't the only insomniac on Alpha shift.

Coward, he thinks.

No true Klingon would ever slink away, hide in his quarters rather than face the truth of things.

He drinks his coffee in bursts while he dresses in uniform trousers and a soft blue tunic with a wide, high neck; it used to stand, reaching his mouth, but wear has made it flop a little. It isn’t smart, but it’s comfortable, and at – he checks the PADD – 0354 that’s all he can be bothered with.

He takes his coffee and walks through the corridors, fluorescent light harsh after the darkness of his quarters. He squints, feeling a resurgence of the headache, and walks to the turbolift with his eyes downcast. No-one is passing through the living quarters at this time and he manages to get to the lift unaccosted.

He doesn’t feel much like a Klingon, right now, leaning against the side of the turbolift, loose-limbed and heavy. He hates this weakness, the weight that drags at his hard-won confidence. He knocks back the coffee, wincing at the taste of the sunken sugar, and rolls the cup between his hands. The turbolift is supposed to be a smooth enough ride that it doesn’t make one feel ill, unlike the antique Terran lifts you get Minsk’s older buildings, but it must be malfunctioning because he feels his stomach tangle as the lift approaches Ten-Forward.

The lift stops and the doors open just outside Ten-Forward, which is lower lit than usual. Ambiance, he supposes, as he walks in. No-one’s eyes lift to him, which he is glad of; only a few tables are occupied, mostly by the Gamma shift as they wind down. A few Beta shift in their civilian clothes, and a single face he recognises as one of Geordi’s Alpha-shift engineers. Guinan is leaning on the bar, smiling in that undirected but alert way she has, and she nods at him as he puts his empty cup on the bar for recycling.

 

There’s a table just by one of the windows that’s empty and far enough from the clustered Delta uniforms that he doesn’t feel too self-conscious, and he sits down there, leaning his elbows on the table. He pulls them off again as soon as he hears footsteps, hearing his mother’s voice in his head reminding him of his manners.

“You’re early, Worf,” Guinan says, her voice as gentle as ever.

He looks up at her, and realises he’s not fit for company when he compliments the olive green of her outfit; he feels his face heat, and makes some noise about the painkillers.

“Thank you,” she interrupts, smiling, “What can I get for you?”

He hadn’t thought this far ahead, but before he _can_ think he’s asked for oatmeal, sweet and buttered, and another cup of coffee.

She moves away, stopping at the Alpha-engineer’s table on her way, and Worf rests his head on his hand. He should have tried to sleep, he thinks; he feels like a failing Vulcan, struggling to keep his impulses walled up. He feels drifty, dreamy, _human –_ and that shouldn’t be a bad thing, but it makes him feel far from himself, disconnected. On Earth it was different, but here - he has to be Klingon, here, the model of his culture on whom the future depends.

He snorts to himself, and rubs his hand through the hair that has fallen again over his face. He knows, if he voiced that thought, that everyone would tell him that that’s not true, that he hasn’t any mould to make or break or any image to live up to. Tell him not to take himself so seriously.

Guinan puts the coffee and oatmeal down in front of him, and pulls out the opposite chair. She sits down, leans back and steeples her hands.

“You’re having some deep thoughts, there,” she says, humour in her voice.

“I could not sleep.”

“Taking things too seriously?”

He huffs, amused by her knowing, and stirs sugar through his coffee.

She leans forward over the table and he meets her eyes.

“It’s alright to be human, sometimes, Worf. Some of the best aliens I’ve known have been human.”

They laugh together, but he thinks he understands her.

“I am already too human,” he says, wanting to end the sentence _for the Klingons_ but wondering what that makes him.

“The Klingon Empire turned their back on you, Worf,” she says, “Is it worth chasing their approval, even now?”

He feels small, pulling in his shoulders and hiding a little behind his coffee. Guinan reaches out, rests her hand on his arm. Her skin is slightly over-cool.

“I do not know who I am, if I do not.”

“You’re still you. Everyone on the ship will see you the same way.”

Worf puts the cup down, stirs the oatmeal. He’s fidgeting, he knows.

“That,” he says, quietly, “Is why I could not sleep.”

Guinan leans back in the chair, looking at him. “If you want people to see you differently, you have to let them see you.”

Worf resists the urge to shudder a little. In truth, he doesn’t want to chase that approval – he wants to throw himself into the Federation – he wants to go home and lay in his childhood bedroom and remember what it felt like to feel more than a little human.

Instead he drinks his coffee, and Guinan stands up. She pats his shoulder.

“You can make your own way, Lieutenant,” she says, and walks away.

 Worf sighs. The Ten-Forward doors woosh; Guinan murmurs a _good morning, gentlemen._ Worf looks at the clock over the bar – it’s just gone 0430. He should go, once he’s finished his breakfast, and make himself presentable.

He cradles the bowl in one hand and starts eating, slowly. It tastes almost right, and his shoulders drop. He closes his eyes, permits himself a comfortable sigh.

“Worf!”

He jumps at the sound of his name, and turns his head – Riker is walking over to him, smiling.

_Commander_ , he can imagine himself saying; Riker will laugh, not unkindly, and he’ll say _we’re off duty_ in that almost-fond, patient way. No matter how many times Worf grunts in response and insists on pulling rank in reverse.

“Commander,” he says, as Riker reaches his table.

Riker has a large mug in one hand, and it smells of Klingon coffee. “We’re off duty,” Riker says, patient, fond, “May I sit?”

Worf nods, and he sits sideways in the chair, stretching his legs out. He holds the mug in both hands, leaning one elbow on the table.

He looks at Worf, and his eyes flick down to the tunic; Worf hastily puts a spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth so that he doesn’t say something abrasive.

“I’m surprised to see you out of uniform,” is all Riker says.

Riker himself is wearing a thin shirt and soft grey trousers; he looks like he might still be in pyjamas. Worf aggressively trains his eyes on the table.

Silence stretches, and Worf feels the same twist he had felt in the turbolift. He sticks his leg out from under the table, gestures to his trousers.

“I am partly in uniform,” he says, not knowing if he’s trying to be funny or save face.

Riker laughs, deciding it for him. “There’s our Worf,” he says, and Worf fiddles with the spoon.

“I endeavour to be professional,” he says, feeling awkward.

“It’s four in the morning.”

_Coward_ , Worf thinks, _coward, coward_. Guinan’s voice, in his head: _so what_.

Worf swallows, drops the spoon, and takes a hair elastic out of the pocket of his tunic. He tips his head back, so that his hair is hanging straight down in the space behind the chair, and gathers it all up into his hand and then into the band.

When he sits properly again, Riker is smiling faintly, as if he knows this is Worf trying a little harder to be off duty.

“I suppose it is,” Worf says. He pauses, rubs his tongue against the back of his teeth, “Would you-” he stops again, looking at Riker’s face as he raises a questioning eyebrow.   
  
“Would you care to join me for breakfast, Will?” he asks, and Riker smiles more broadly.

“I thought I was,” he teases, and Worf gives him a flat look, “Sure. Sure, I’d be delighted.”

Riker turns in the chair, tucking his legs under the table, and Worf glances over at the bar.

Guinan catches his eye and smiles.

 

 


End file.
